Reformism and bureaucracy: legacy from the past and perspectives for the future

The article focuses on the reforms that, at the end of the last century, contributed to the affirmation but were then perhaps unable to avoid the decline of the Public Management model. It therefore examines how the so-called privatization of public employment was prepared, approved and managed. Indeed, this was authoritatively judged, first, as the greatest change in administrative law in the twentieth century, but later, as a «great illusion».